The new HDMI 2.1 specification (and cable) adds support for 10K, 8K HDR, and 4K at 120fps

Originally announced back in January and slated for a mid-year release, the HDMI 2.1 specification is just now making its debut on the world stage. Announced by the HDMI forum yesterday, the new specification offers users the ability to deal with 10K video resolution, as well as other data-intensive formats such as Dynamic HDR, uncompressed 8K HDR video, and 4K at 120fps.

A new Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable standard has also been announced that carries up to 48Gbps, and which is said to have ‘exceptionally low electro-magnetic interference’ to avoid conflict with other devices in the vicinity.

HDMI 2.1 is backwards compatible with earlier versions of the standard, as is the new high speed cable. For more information, visit the HDMI forum website.

Press Release

HDMI FORUM RELEASES VERSION 2.1 OF THE HDMI SPECIFICATION

A Huge Leap Forward Supports Resolutions Up to 10K and Dynamic HDR and Introduces New Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable

SAN JOSE, California – November 28, 2017 - HDMI Forum, Inc. today announced the release of Version 2.1 of the HDMI® Specification which is now available to all HDMI 2.0 adopters. This latest HDMI Specification supports a range of higher video resolutions and refresh rates including 8K60 and 4K120, and resolutions up to 10K. Dynamic HDR formats are also supported, and bandwidth capability is increased up to 48Gbps.

Supporting the 48Gbps bandwidth is the new Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable. The cable ensures high-bandwidth dependent features are delivered including uncompressed 8K video with HDR. It features exceptionally low EMI (electro-magnetic interference) which reduces interference with nearby wireless devices. The cable is backwards compatible and can be used with the existing installed base of HDMI devices.

Version 2.1 of the HDMI Specification is backward compatible with earlier versions of the specification, and was developed by the HDMI Forum’s Technical Working Group whose members represent some of the world’s leading manufacturers of consumer electronics, personal computers, mobile devices, cables and components.

“The HDMI Forum’s mission is to develop specifications meeting market needs, growing demands for higher performance, and to enable future product opportunities,” said Robert Blanchard of Sony Electronics, president of the HDMI Forum.

HDMI Specification 2.1 Features Include:

Higher video resolutions support a range of high resolutions and faster refresh rates including 8K60Hz and 4K120Hz for immersive viewing and smooth fast-action detail. Resolutions up to 10K are also supported for commercial AV, and industrial and specialty usages.

Dynamic HDR support ensures every moment of a video is displayed at its ideal values for depth, detail, brightness, contrast and wider color gamuts—on a scene-by-scene or even a frame-by-frame basis.

The Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable supports the 48G bandwidth for uncompressed HDMI 2.1 feature support. The cable also features very low EMI emission and is backwards compatible with earlier versions of the HDMI Specification and can be used with existing HDMI devices.

Comments

This article is titled "The new HDMI 2.1 specification...". It talks at great length of the all seeing all dancing capabilities if the cable but not one word on the actual specification. I'd like to know what makes it so great, how is this capability achieved. Just a few words, is it the shielding, the diameter, the insulation, what?

With that much resolution things like fonts and graphics will have more detail and sharpness. Broadcasters will be able to cram pop up ads and other crap all over the lower thirds and sides of the picture and the only way to see full screen content will be by using your credit card.

Also instead of stacking your TV sets on top of one other for multiple Football games the screen could be divided in to as many Chanels as you want or afford.

TV and computer will become one in the same allowing you to see your Twitter feeds and cooking shows all at once. Instant gratification all over the place.

It’s sad we will never again experience gathering the family around the Zenth color TV set on Sunday nights to watch Disney and Ed Sullivan. It was low tech, but meaningful, enjoyable, and healthy entertainment.

Errors in the data for video do not matter as much so there is no error correction in HDMI as there is in SATA. I think M.2 has double the data rate of SATA 3.2 so that is probably why the high performance SSD drives are M.2. either way there are few storage solutions that can keep up with any of these data rates. Microsoft's Xpoint might be able to at some point, but it will be expensive.

This will be of possible interest to cinematographers and possible the NSA, but not to mainstream videographers. 4K is overkill in most situations and ignores the ppi limitations of the human eye at normal viewing distances. Great way to sell more hardware to the gullible.

8K rez (4320p) in video is already very, very real of an experience for the viewers, and from what I have read & seen, there is no reason to go past 16K (8640p) video pixel resolution anyhow, since the human eye will not be able to detect that much detail.

I'm really interested in the Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) feature for media playback , since this eliminates the 3-4 second blank screen caused when going from navigation to playing a movie.The downside is that the whole chain has to be HDMI 2.1 (TV, AV receiver, media player).Good thing i haven't updated my 10 year old Panasonic plasma yet.

I agree ! Born yesterday people don't seem to realize how things have changed in just 20/30 years, and how technology leaps are changing so many things in human relationship and behavior. Amazing and scary somehow too.

After the failure of Thunderbolt in the Windows and Linux world, Intel is now betting on another lame horse called US-C. Maybe they can recoup their R&D investment fro folk shelling out up to $13,000 for a new iMac.

USB-C is the future of USB. And Thunderbolt has not even been close to a failure. It caters to the pro film/video market where it is used extensively. Just like Firewire, it fills the gap needed by high-bandwidth users. Try copying 4TB's of 8K RED footage using USB 3.0... then do it using Thunderbolt 3... .and you accomplish it in one-fourth the time. Something that is absolutely critical when in the field and needing to offload footage.

Isn't most of the content provided at 24 or 30FPS outside of video games anyway ? And for movies outside of bluerays with so high compression that basically a 4K on netflix look overall worse than full HD on classical blueray ?

No current consumer TV can accept or display a 4K @ 120 FPS signal. One reason for that is that this HDMI specification is required in order to transmit that data.

Honestly, you just saw the bogus spec of 120/240/480 Hz and assumed that means the TV can actually display full resolution at that frequency.iesCurrent TVs can interpolate up to those frequencies. However, they are not capable of accepting 4K @ 120 FPS signals at all at the moment.

So if you only have a 4k 60fps TV, is this cable/technology a complete waste of money?

BTW, anything higher than 4k is a complete waste, because the human eye can't see anything better than that on a TV or computer monitor, so what is the point? There is a point when deminishing returns does come into affect, and we have hit that point with anything over and above 4k video.

People don't care anymore for music. While manufactuer and all provide insane specs most of the music heard today is compressed and quite heavily. For mainstream CD quality is still better than most compressed music available and almost nobody care. Because for people, it is not worth it.

For video, DVD still several time more than BR and BR 4K sales are not even visible. Streaming offer 4K but outside of HDR, often a standard BR offer overall better quality than so called 4K due to high compresssed 4K in streaming.

We don't exactly know when and how but at point people don't care anymore.

They may pay for some marketing argument when buying the new TV or whatever else, but they may not really view that 8K content that often on movies, streaming, youtube etc. Because almost nobody will even care of 8K.

Even if it says to be 8K or 16K, doesn't mean that the actual content would look any better than less compressed 4K, say a 4K BR and that most people would care.

@Nicolas06 - "BR 4K sales are not even visible. " - true, but I recently bought a 4k AVR and already had 4K TV so I researched whether it was worth upgrading my blu-ray player. There is so little content available that I've decided to wait. When there's more I'll buy the equipment and likely do my bit for 4K BR sales.

Yep Nicolas06 you are spot on. Whether there is a difference or not is irrelevant, it’s whether you can convince someone is worth it to upgrade to it that matters. If Joe six pack is happy with 4k (he’s probably happy with HD) you’re are going to have a tough sell on your hands.

Well he probably is sitting 2 feet from it as its a monitor not a TV also he could have better than average vision, amoungst photographers thats not uncommon (about 15% for the genral population though). But you're right when you get to TV's its not making an appreciable difference until they're the size of your wall (which may happen but not for some time).

"If you're concerned about color accuracy with your photography, which you should be, then a TV panel is definitely not what you want to be viewing your photos on."

The best technology right now are OLED and QLED (with OLED having the edge). You find theses technologies on TV on phone. Much more difficult as PC monitors even if it does exist.

The problem is qualibrated profesionnal monitors for graphists are a tiny market. As such they can't invest the billions in technologies and factory for a few sales.

But highend TV have support for qualibration and profiles as obviously calibrated colors isn't a problem for still only. They support the broadcast and cinema qualibration and color profiles that more demanding than what is required for stills.

Like I already said.... 8K rez (4320p) in video is already very, very real of an experience for the viewers, and from what I have read & seen, there is not much of a reason to go past 16K (8640p) video pixel resolution, since the human eye will not be able to detect that much detail, anyhow.

I don't get it... Why haven't they decided to go with Thunderbolt 3 in the future instead of creating a new HDMI version? Thunderbolt 3 carries video and sound is 40Gbit/s.A 1-cable-for-all time has not come yet.

Thunderbolt 3 would be complete overkill. USB-C could definitely work *if* standards were developed for ARC- and CEC-equivalent functionality. That actually could be great, but industry momentum makes it pretty unlikely any time soon.

I doubt. HDMI is much broadly included in every blueray, TV units. This is not PC world and it has its own purpose. This is a wish of Apple guys but its not going to happen few years still. And especially when HDMI is backward compatible so you can still connect old HDMI unit to TV`s with new HDMI versions. This is something you would be not able to do when switching to completely new interface.

This is off topic but that`s true. One example is sockets for their CPU`s. Intel it changing like a sockets where AMD provide longer socket support which I would consider as customer big plus because it save money and me as customer makes me feel that company doesn`t ditch me anytime because their changed their mind.

In regards to the thunderbolt and HDMI. Those a bit different world. One is more PC oriented/second one is more video/audio oriented.

@mpgxsvcd. Oh 2⅔ is definitely significant, but the graph indicates the square of that (about 7) as area - and they even made the orange part almost double the length of the grey, to further mislead our brains since the volume is 13 times bigger...

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